Amazon Door Desks

To show of their thrifty roots Amazon still use doors as desks:

http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/01/early-amazon-door-desks.html

Iconic Action: IBM takes a big Internet stand

A guy from IBM visited an early Internet conference. IBM had no presence there. So he booked the biggest stand for the next year's conference, even though he didn't have the authority or budget. This gave IBM a year to pull together a coherent web offer for the show.

Source: Leading the Revolution, Gary Hamel

Petrobas: role modelling the important of safety

At Petrobas the CEO and other top managers "have joined the auditing teams that check the HSE compliance of our business and service units and new projects. Senior, executive, and general managers have participated in more than 1,000 audits, going on field trips to refineries, offshore platforms, and pipelines." [...]

"When I [CEO] step off the helicopter an at offshore platform, it's sort of like the general showing up at the barracks for the morning bed check. But employees know that I'm there because I are about what they're doing, not to catch some indiscretion. This is part of an important formal and informal trickling-down process that drives the cultural change into day-to-day operations."

'The Greening of Petrobras', Jose Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo [CEO], HBR Mar 09

Stew Leonards

Just visited US retailer Stew Leonards' store in Yonkers, New York.

Two iconic actions jump out:
- Giant 'stone' at the store entrance with 'The customer is always right!' engraved
- “Up the Ladder” posters above the checkouts. They show an employee's name and photo, and all the positions they have held in the store as they move up the ladder. Great idea showcasing their employer brand.

Loads of other interesting ideas:
•Webcam showing the cows in their farm
•Huge mirror above the bakery shows them baking fresh products
•As previously mentioned, they showcase recommendations of their food from local rather than national press
•Sign: “If you wouldn’t take it home for you mother don’t put it our for customers”
•Sign showing chickens and cows standing up and wearing nothing but a barrel with “Get Naked” on it (i.e. chicken and beef contains no additives)
•By the cheese counter a screen shows employees making fresh mozzarella, as they do every day. Next to it is a sign explaining the steps of the process.
•Huge banner (at least 2 storeys high) near store entrance shows cover of Fortune in which they were named amongst the top 100 best places to work.
•Want to order from the deli? A computer allows you to select what you want (e.g. sliced meat, cheese etc) and then collect without waiting a few minutes later.

Darty's Contract of Confidence (Contrat de Confiance) - Iconic Action

Darty is a leading French electrical goods retailer, currently owned by KESA Electricals Plc.

The “Contract of Confidence/Trust” is a contract between the firm and its customers. Darty launched it 30 years ago, promising price, choice and service.

It contains tangile specifics, e.g.
- Darty is never knowingly undersold
- They guarantee a repair on any day of the week (unheard of in a country where no one worked on Sundays)

Iconic action: each employee signs the contract of confidence when they join.

Sources: Mainly Disruption by Jean-Marie Dru (p 163). Also KESA Electricals site here.
CDC booklet itself available here.

'Individual Economic Value' statements at Alberto-Culver

Since 1998 people at Albert-Culver have 'invididual economic value' statements (IEVs), a sentence describing how their role contributes to company profitability. Communicates both the that individual and the rest of the company.

Not sure I love the example given, though. From a consumer relations person: "I turn every customer I talk to into a company fan".

Source: Alberto-Culver's HR Director Carol Lavin Bernick. Excellent article in HBR describing their turnaround.

Merging buildings? Re-assign offices from scratch

When Lockheed and Martin Marietta merged their headquarters into a building previously occupied by Martin Marietta, they moved everyone out and reassigned offices from scratch. This avoided the impression that anyone had been bumped or that some people were more important than others. That action was critical from a social standpoint. "The attitude 'we bought you' is a corporate cancer." (Source: HBR article, 1997)

Same thing with P&G:
Following the P&G acquisition of Gillette the day came for Gillette staff's site merger into P&G's offices.Tarek Farahat, P&G's country general manager, arranged that when people arrived at the facility on Monday morning nearly everyone from both companies were in new offices on new floors.

Including unavailable metrics

At DaVita, if a metric is considered important, but the data isn't currently available, the metric is included on reports anyway with the notation 'not available'. The persistent mention of important measures that are missing helps motivate the company to figure out ways to gather that information.

DaVita is $2bn Californian manufacturer of kidney dialysis machines.

Source: Evidence-Based Management, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, HBR

BP's Aloe Vera Plants - Iconic Action

BP has placed potted Aloe Vera plants in the lobby of its headquarters. Of all the green plants, Aloe Vera converts the most carbon dioxide to oxygen. As such, it embodies a core value of the BP brand: to be "green." Every day as employees walk into the office, the plants remind them of their shared corporate vision - to go beyond petroleum - and the imperative to develop renewable energy.

http://www.landor.com/index.cfm?do=thinking.article&storyid=465

Home Visits - Iconic Action

I've heard this told by an ex-P&G employee about AG Lafley, and by a Unilever person of one of their CEOs. Either way, the CEO was said to get off a plane on a business trip to a country and insist on doing 2 customer home visits before they'd go to the office or look at the P&L.

IKEA's Ingvar Kamprad Statue - Iconic Action

When they erected a statue of IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad in his hometown they invited him to perform the unveiling. Instead of cutting the ribbon, he untied it, folded it up neatly and handed it to the mayor. "Now you can use this again," he said.

Continental Airlines - Iconic Actions

Gordon Bethune, CEO of Continental Airlines from 1994 until 2004.

- Concerned that customer-service employees were micromanaging customers by relying too heavily on a very thick instruction manual, he set fire to a stack of manuals in the parking lot.
- After he offered each employee a $65 bonus every month that Continental placed among the top five for on-time departures, Continental jumped to fourth the subsequent month and first thereafter.

Source: http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2006/10/the-tools-of-cooperation-and-change/ar/5
(probably quoting from Bethune's book From First to Worst)

IBM & Wal-Mart - Iconic Actions

Lou Gerstner, IBM
At a first Divisional meeting, where managers were accustomed to presenting great reams of overhead projections, Gerstner turned off the projector and insisted they all just talk. Very quickly, having the best slides stopped being among the criteria for success at the company.

Sam Walton, Wal-Mart
In one instance, he heard a customer complain to a clerk that the fishing rod he had bought at Wal-Mart Stores had broken. "Mr. Sam" walked over to the fishing rod section, got an identical rod, gave it to the customer and deeply apologized.

Source: John Kotter article, http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/12/power-of-stories-oped-cx_jk_0412kotter.html?partner=daily_newsletter